Bullion India plans pan-India operations

Company has two existing delivery centres each in Mumbai and Hyd and expects to grow it to around 25

RiddiSiddhi Bullions Limited-promoted Bullion India has announced its plans to have 20-25 delivery centres in partnership with prominent players and local dealers to enhance its presence in the retail bullion investment market.

While the company has two existing delivery centres each in Mumbai and Hyderabad, it expects to grow to around 25 by converting some of its vendor units to delivery centres. It plans to open such centres in Visakhapatnam and add another to the existing one here.

The planned delivery centres will support the company's online business model allowing one to invest in lowest denominations (convenience of buying as low as 0.1 gram of gold and one gram of silver) that are backed by invoices.

“We are also in touch with a foreign exchange company, which has 19 branches in India to use their presence to expand our reach to cover the entire country this fiscal,” said Sachin Kothari, director of Bullion India. Depending on the business growth across these delivery centres, it may also convert them into full-fledged franchises, he said.

According to Kothari, the company allows its customers to either opt for delivery of bullion or sell the accrued bullion in vaults back to the company at the prevailing market price. The vault is checked and monitored by IDBI Bank Trustee Company, which also certifies the quality of bullion.

Bullion India procures bullion from dealers in the spot market on behalf of its customers.

Stating the bullion buy-sell margins had been wafer-thin, Kothari said it would target volumes to grow its revenue. "Our goal this fiscal is to transact sale of at least one kilogram of bullion every day," he added. It currently is doing only one-third of the targeted volume.

He said the company was planning to introduce jewellery redemption of bullion units at its delivery centres.